Need help and advice with Build 5536

[Arthur Lipscomb]

Hi. I could use some help and advice. I have a 160 gig SATA that has been
my long term C drive, which XP is on and a recently purchased 500 gig SATA I
purchased specifically for Vista. I installed Vista build 5536 on the 500
gig drive. I wanted to be able to go into the bios and select the operating
system by picking which hard drive boots first. This hasn't worked. When I
select the drive Vista is installed on I receive the following error, "Error
Loading OS". However, when the original C drive is selected instead of
loading Windows XP, Vista loads and I'm given an option to load Vista or XP.
This is OK, but I'd prefer it if Vista didn't load by default, especially
since my drive with XP on it is the first boot drive in the bios. I'm not
sure but I suspect the problem is when I originally formatted the 500 gig
drive I did not format it as a boot drive.



Any idea as to how I can set it for Vista to only load when the drive it is
installed on is the first drive in the bios. And if possible, I'd like to
be able to designate Vista as the C drive when it's first in the bios. When
the final version of Vista is released, I'll be doing a clean install.



Also, I have an ATI All-in-wonder 9600. Vista does not detect the card's TV
tuner. I was using the Vista drivers. I've removed them. The next time I
restart Vista should I just use the default Vista drivers, use the beta ATI
drivers, or the ATI XP drivers?



Finally, my system is an AMD 64 3000 with 2 gigs of dual channel memory.
The ATI is an AGP video card with 128 megs of memory. My system rating is a
3.5 with the video card apparently being the bottleneck. The system seems
to run a bit sluggishly. Will upgrading to a Dual-Core Processor show a
significant increase in performance or would the video card continue to act
as a bottleneck? Will it run faster or slower with the 64 bit version of
Vista?



Thanks in advance

 

[Tom Ziegmann]

Hello Arthur,

You will be unable to select what drive to boot from in the BIOS as Windows
Setup copies the boot loader to the primary disk if they are both connected
at the time of install. If you want XP to load by default here is how to
do that.

1.Click on Start -> then Right Click on Computer and Click Properties
2. On the left hand side of the screen Click on Advanced System Settings
3. If a UAC prompt appears click Continue
4.Under Startup and Recovery click on Settings
5. Then Under Default Operating System Select Windows XP (or it might be
named 'Older Version of Windows')
6. Click OK then Click OK back at the System Properties Screen and then Restart

Please do not install the ATI Beta drivers. They are an older version and
any bug reports filed against them will be invalid. MS is currently working
on the Tuner issues with MCE. When RC1 comes out definetly use the 64-bit
edition as there will be some performance improvements. Also when you file
your bug reports please make them Public.



Tom Ziegmann
Microsoft Certified Professional
Windows Vista / Server Longhorn Technical Beta Tester
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Technical Beta Tester

 

[Edwin E. Smith]

First, use the windows XP CD and boot into recovery console. Then login to
your XP partition.

Run Fixboot and Fixmbr to restore your XP so it boots directly.

Then disconnect the XP hard drive and re-install Vista on the new drive.
This way Vista can't mess with your XP installation. After Vista is fully
installed, shutdown and re-connect your XP drive. Then you can use the BIOS
settings to select which system to boot.

I have the ATI All-in-Wonder also but there are no Vista drivers to support
the TV tuner part. I haven't tried the new build on my 64 bit laptop yet.

Edwin

 

[Arthur Lipscomb]

THANK YOU!

 

[Tom Ziegmann]

Hello Arthur,

You are very welcome If you have any other problems please post them here!

Tom Ziegmann
Microsoft Certified Professional
Windows Vista / Server Longhorn Technical Beta Tester
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Technical Beta Tester